Public Health England (PHE) 

PHE are an executive agency of the Department of Health and Social Care, and a distinct organisation with operational autonomy. PHE provide government, local government, the NHS, Parliament, industry and the public with evidence-based professional, scientific expertise and support.

PHE are responsible for:

  • making the public healthier and reducing differences between the health of different groups by promoting healthier lifestyles, advising government and supporting action by local government, the NHS and the public
  • protecting the nation from public health hazards
  • preparing for and responding to public health emergencies
  • improving the health of the whole population by sharing our information and expertise, and identifying and preparing for future public health challenges
  • supporting local authorities and the NHS to plan and provide health and social care services such as immunisation and screening programmes, and to develop the public health system and its specialist workforce
  • researching, collecting and analysing data to improve our understanding of public health challenges, and come up with answers to public health problems

PHE do this through world-leading science, knowledge and intelligence, advocacy, partnerships and providing specialist public health services.

The NHSA

The NHSA is a health partnership established by the leading Universities, NHS Hospital Trusts and Academic Health Science Networks (AHSNs) in the North of England to improve the health and wealth of the region by creating an internationally recognized life science and healthcare system. The NHSA is globally unique in its approach, linking research intensive universities, teaching Trusts and four Academic Health Science Networks that encompass a patient population of over 15 million people.

The NHSA represents an exciting opportunity to recognise and promote the value of the North of England to the global Innovation, Health and Wealth agenda. The members of the NHSA have agreed to collaborate to create a single-portal, bringing together their research, health science innovation and commercialisation to provide benefits for researchers, universities, hospitals, patients as well as commercial partners. 

 

N8 Research Partnership

The N8 Research Partnership is a strategic alliance of the 8 most research-intensive universities in the North of England (Durham, Lancaster, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield, and York).  The N8 universities collaborate together to create a critical mass of researchers and to find unique teams, and inter-disciplinary solutions, to the most challenging issues facing us today.

Our Vision is to be an exceptionally effective cluster of research, innovation and training excellence, delivering benefits to the economy and communities in North of England and beyond. The N8 currently collaborates in areas such as Food Security, where nutrition and diet are a key aspect, and Policing, where mental health and early intervention for the prevention of harm are key challenges.

New areas for the N8 include;

  • Looking at how children and young people in the region can realise their full potential by ensuring a healthy, secure, and inspiring environment for them to grow up in,
  • Investigating how businesses can embrace technological advances to minimise their impact on climate change, pollution, and improve sustainability.

We want the North of England to be a place where the innovation eco-system of universities, public services, and industry, supports a healthy and prosperous community.

The Innovation Agency

The Innovation Agency is an NHS organisation. We are the Academic Health Science Network for the North West Coast, covering Cheshire, Merseyside, Lancashire and South Cumbria, with around 4.1 million residents. Our footprint includes 22 NHS providers, 20 CCGs, nine universities and a large number of life science industry partners and small to medium size businesses. We are one of 15 Academic Health Science Networks in England, set up in 2013 to support health systems to improve the health outcomes of their local communities. We aim to maximise the NHS’s contribution to economic growth by enabling and being catalysts for change through collaboration and the spread of innovation and best practice. Our core purpose is to spread innovation, improve health and care, and generate economic growth We are catalysts for the spread of innovation, improving health and care, generating economic growth and helping facilitate change across whole health and social care economies. We connect regional networks of NHS and academic organisations, local authorities, the third sector and industry, responding to the diverse needs of our patients and populations through partnership and collaboration.

Bradford Institute for Health Research (BIHR)

The Bradford Institute for Health Research (BIHR) was established in 2007 by Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (BTHFT) due to the growing research activity at the Trust and in recognition of the unique research partnership between the primary and secondary care NHS Trusts in Bradford and Airedale and the universities of Bradford, Leeds and York.  Since then the BIHR has developed and increased its expertise in clinical research and notably applied health research and now has a reputation of being one of the leading centres in conducting applied health research in the country.

Edge Hill University

Edge Hill University is based on an attractive, award-winning 160-acre campus Ormskirk, Lancashire. The institution has been providing higher education since 1885, with a mission to create opportunity from knowledge. Edge Hill is ranked as Gold in the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). 

Edge Hill University supports Widening Access to Medicine and the Faculty of Health, Social Care and Medicine has a Foundation Year for Medicine for widening participation students from 2019, following the announcement by the Secretary of State for Health that a Medical School will be established at the University.  The new undergraduate medical school will emphasise greater understanding of local communities and the health challenges associated with inequalities. 

Public health research within the Faculty is led by Professor Paola Dey (paola.dey@edgehill.ac.uk). Professor Dey’s research focuses on health inequalities, with a particular emphasis on cancer inequalities and access to services, promoting activity in younger obese adults, interdisciplinary research into the language of public health messages and the implementation and evaluation of public health interventions.

Dr Marian Peacock, Senior Lecturer, has research interests in the sociology of public health, the impacts of life in unequal societies and the place of neoliberalism. Her most recent research has concerned the older prisoner population and end of life care and the associated ethics and justice questions.

Dr Stephen Clayton, Senior Lecturer, has research interests in employment/welfare and health (inequalities) and the politics of health and social policy formulation and implementation.

Dr Nicola Relph, Senior Lecturer, has research interests in epidemiology of sports injuries, incidence of musculoskeletal injuries in physical activity initiatives, particularly novice researchers, injury screening and prevention.

Dr Phillip Gichuru is a medical statistician with interests in analysis of large health related datasets, subgroup classification and psychometric test evaluation in child assessment tools.

Fuse: the Centre for Translational Research in Public Health

Fuse brings together the five North East Universities of Durham, Newcastle, Northumbria, Sunderland and Teesside in an innovative collaboration to transform health and wellbeing and reduce health inequalities through the conduct of world-class public health research and its translation into value-for-money policy and practice.

The Centre provides a unique forum for researchers operating in a range of scientific disciplines to work with policy and practice partners from the NHS, local and national government, and voluntary and community sectors to help transform public health.

Fuse is led by Professors Ashley Adamson (Director) and Carolyn Summerbell (Deputy Director) and our six research programmes comprise:

  • Behaviour Change
  • Complex Systems
  • Early Life and Adolescence
  • Health Inequalities
  • Healthy Ageing
  • Translational Research

As part of our core mission of translation of research evidence into policy and practice we launched a responsive research and evaluation facility called AskFuse in June 2013.

Fuse is one of eight leading academic centres with excellence in applied public health research which make up the NIHR School for Public Health Research (NIHR SPHR).

The School brings together its members’ expertise in a collaborative working relationship – to ensure emphasis on what works practically, can be applied across the whole country and better meets the needs of policy makers, practitioners and the public. SPHR is in its second phase of funding, following an open competition, the membership of the School from 1 April 2017 to 30 March 2022.

Leeds Beckett University

At Leeds Beckett University we are committed to building our reputation and research profile; within our region, nationally and internationally as stated in our Strategic Plan. With over 1300 academic staff we cover a wide range of research disciplines. Across these disciplines, our Institutes and Centres provide the environment for growing a research culture, demonstrating our expertise of international excellence from across the University. This collaborative approach helps us to provide solutions to important issues of a modern society.

University of Manchester

At the University of Manchester, within the Division of Population Health, Health Services Research & Primary Care, the focus of our research is on how health service intervention, from policies to lab-based sciences, impact on society more widely. Our broad spectrum of internationally recognised expertise includes:

  • Health policy and practice evaluation and interventions;
  • Advanced methodological research in biostatistics and health economics;
  • Risk factors, variation in treatment response, clinical progression and outcomes in population health;
  • Epidemiological approaches to the analysis of biological samples and clinical data and to understanding inequalities in health;
  • Variations in care provision, exploiting the unique epidemiological database resources in drug misuse, trauma and occupational health.

The division includes staff of cognate research disciplines across primary care, public, occupational, environmental and health, clinical and molecular epidemiology and social care, as well as methodologists from biostatistics, health economics, qualitative, policy, clinical trials and health service research.

Northumbria University

Northumbria is a research-rich, business-focused, professional university with a global reputation for academic excellence. It is based in the heart of Newcastle upon Tyne, which is regularly voted the best place in the UK for students.

The University has its origins in the Rutherford College, founded in 1880. Today, by putting students at the heart of an outstanding experience, and with world leading research and award-winning partnerships, Northumbria is a new kind of excellent university.

Northumbria is top ten in the UK for the number of graduates entering professional employment and nine out of ten of our graduates are working or studying six months after graduation. We are ranked 21st out of 111 universities in the 2014 Times Higher Education Student Satisfaction Survey.

Northumbria works with major employers, including Nike, IBM, Nissan, Proctor & Gamble, the BBC, and the NHS, while more than 560 employers and 60 professional bodies sponsor or accredit the University’s programmes.  Innovative and entrepreneurial, we are also ranked fourth in the UK for graduate business start-ups.

We have a campus in London and Amsterdam as well as Newcastle, and work in partnership with other higher education institutions across the world attracting students from 136 countries.

Northumbria University is made of up of 4 faculties:

  • Arts, Design and Social Sciences
  • Business and Law
  • Engineering and Environment
  • Health and Life Sciences

As part of the strategic plans for the University there has been significant investment in the research base and resulting from this, Northumbria was in the top 50 in the REF 2014 for research power, reflecting the quality and scale of research activity.   This has resulted in significant investment in eight Multi-Disciplinary Research Themes (MDRTs) to help tackle some of society’s biggest challenges through collaborative and contract research, consultancy and continuing professional development:

  • Bio-economy
  • Critically Aware Design Innovation
  • Digital Living
  • Environmental and Global Justice
  • Extreme Environments
  • Future Engineering
  • Humanities
  • Integrated Health and Social Care

University of Salford

The University of Salford takes a multidisciplinary, evidence-based approach to public health to explore the social determinants of health. Staff have a strong research portfolio that includes: work place health, physical activity, alcohol misuse, sexual health, digital technologies in health and dental public health. The University of Salford is a research-informed institution that creates and applies new ideas, turning them into opportunities to benefit individuals and the knowledge economy. We are one of the one of the largest providers of Nursing, Midwifery and Allied Health Professional education programmes in the UK, known for our track record of collaborating with a wide range of industry partners across health and social care to produce highly skilled graduates, with real work life experience. We are also experts in the social sciences sector and are known locally, regionally, nationally and internationally for our applied research into the interface between health, wellbeing, housing, criminal justice and social care. We effect social and cultural change by research-informed engagement and practice. Our sports and exercise academics work with a broad range of leading sports clubs, teams and industry partners to deliver excellent research and learning experiences. Salford has a rich history and an exciting future; we sit at the heart of the Northern Powerhouse, and actively engage with stakeholders across the region to address the health outcomes arising from the devolution of power to Greater Manchester’s local authorities. We have always been committed to addressing the needs and aspirations of our local community and beyond.

University of Sheffield

We’re one of the UK’s leading universities, with an international reputation for excellence. Official teaching quality assessments rate us very highly, and excellent research assessment results confirm our reputation as a centre for a wide variety of world-class research.

We have nearly 28,000 students and around 8,200 staff. The University is a popular choice with applicants for university places, and once they arrive our students enjoy the experience so much that many settle in Sheffield after they graduate.

The University, like Sheffield itself, has earned a reputation as an informal, friendly and welcoming place to be, for people from all sorts of backgrounds and walks of life. Our staff and students represent over 130 different countries. We value the diversity of our University community, and aim to work together so we can make the most of our differences.

University of Central Lancashire

The University of Central Lancashire is committed to creating positive change in  students, staff, business partners and wider communities, enabling them to develop their full potential by providing excellent higher education, innovation and research. It is committed to being a strong civic university and also has academic partners in all regions of the globe. In 2010, the University became the first UK modern Higher Education institution to appear in the QS World University Rankings.

University of York

Founded on principles of excellence, equality and opportunity for all, the University of York opened in 1963. Since then we have become one of the world’s leading universities, carving out a reputation as an academic powerhouse where a clear focus on excellence has secured national and international recognition alongside longer established institutions. A member of the Russell Group of research-intensive universities, we are committed to enhancing our position as one of the world’s premier institutions for inspirational and life-changing research. 

Our global reputation in health and wellbeing is built on excellent research that begins with understanding the fundamental underpinnings of health and disease. We draw on a wide range of academic skills and disciplines, working together to discover, refine and apply new interventions to increase population health and wellbeing and to improve the fairness of its distribution.